Course info

How society defines deviants - its outcasts and outsiders - and how the people so defined respond to this categorization; the nature of normal and abnormal, legal and illegal. Do these categories have absolute moral meaning, or do they always depend on the particular society and era in which they are defined? Topics to be addressed include stigma and stereotyping, cross-cultural variations in gender roles, the status of the inmate, deviance as blocked opportunity, and the political mobilization of outsiders. No prerequisites. (Meets GEC Cultural Diversity Requirement.)